


I Keep Waiting For You To Come Home

by tiredperalta



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Getting Together, Major Character Undeath, Peraltiago, They deserve so much happiness, amy just really cares about jake, jake doesnt know what to do, mentions of being on suicide watch, theres so many emotions im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-26 01:14:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14391081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredperalta/pseuds/tiredperalta
Summary: "Amy Santiago is 34 when she learns her harshest lesson."She lost Jake in the mafia. She lost Jake in Florida. She lost Jake in prison.A routine arrest gone wrong, three cops held hostage by a man who was just a little too trigger happy who demanded Jake Peralta had to stay but detectives Boyle and Santiago could go free.She loses Jake when he's shot.And then he returns.





	I Keep Waiting For You To Come Home

**Author's Note:**

> I'm like,, actually kinda proud of this. i've worked on it for ages like I literally made a timeline of events to make everything line up lmao
> 
> This isnt a story about the supernatural by the way. Just read it to see what I mean.
> 
> Feedback is appreciated!!

Amy Santiago is 34 when she learns her harshest lesson.

She learns that a simple life of another person has a ridiculous amount of control over her own.

And she doesn't want to learn that. She doesn't want to see the world suddenly in black and white. She wants to live in her idealistic creation in which everything turns out okay. It's just, recently, she’s realised she has to come face to face with the black and white in the world.

If her boyfriend (soon to be husband), Jake, was to ask her how she was (and get a reply in full truth and honesty), she would tell him that she feels that lately she puts more effort into attracting shadows at night and crawling into bed than brightening herself up and attracting sunshine, which has become increasingly tiring as of late. She tries to smile, tries to remember the idealistic world she used to live in that holds watching Die Hard and getting married and becoming a Captain. A world that holds curly hair and a too loud laugh of a boy she has grown to love.

That night, she tells him about her dreams. She knows she can weave words beautifully into stories when the need arises and he quietly listens to the worries flying from her lips. She tells him of her dreams of gunshots and flashing lights and sirens echoing somewhere in the distance.

And then she tells him about how sometimes (often) she thinks the world feels like a cut that won't heal, how she doesn't feel happy and that she's yearning for her brain to keep her awake because when she does dream, the nightmares are so terrible that she doesn't want to ever sleep again.

He tells her the notion he has repeated hundreds of times before: to not worry so much, that she's fine, the dreams can't hurt her.

But Jake's dead so it doesn't really matter.

She’s not sure if he was ever there at all.

* * *

 

She met him when she was 25 and he was 27 and his too-big hoodie hung haphazardly off his shoulders as he welcomed her into the Nine-Nine.

At first, she ignored him. Ignored the bundle of overactive shouting and laughter that shot around the precinct, threatening to overflow onto her desk – into her personal space – at any given moment. He occasionally dropped a bright paper airplane onto her keyboard labelled with an explanation of who someone was or where something could be found.

(Amy learns quickly: Rosa was the curly haired angry looking woman to her left; Gina was the loud one by the captain’s office; printers could be found in the room with the blue door; punch the vending machine above the number eight key for free food and the evidence locker was situated to the left with a code that changed every day.)

She types and signs forms and greets her new co-workers with a restrained sense of dignity, notes down an endless stream of names for office Christmas cards – Terry, Rosa, Gina, Charles, Stevie, Carl, Scully, Mark, Norm, Nancy, Jake -

She’s standing to pack up her things at the end of the day when she feels him collapse lazily into her chair, earning a loud creak from it.

“Santiago,” he drawls, “drinks tonight at eight o’clock, Shaws Bar, to celebrate you joining us and before you ask, no, you don’t have a choice so yes, you do have to come.”

She feels herself instinctively relax for the first time since she stepped through the grey elevator doors and nods.

8 o’clock, on the dot, she slides up next to him in his booth, replacing the solid, reassuring figure of Charles who mutters something about hearing wedding bells to Jake who rolls his eyes. She thanks him for welcoming her, asks him to tell her about himself. And when he’s listed off the obvious, easy and comfortable facts about himself (he left the academy at 24, he’s been at the Nine-Nine for three years and his favourite film is Die Hard) she talks openly about herself. She’s got seven brothers, she likes books, she wants to be Captain one day, she reads an awful lot and she often stress-smokes.

He says that’ll kill her eventually. She agrees, reaches into her bag and pulls out a battered box of cigarettes. There’s only three left.

“Been a bit stressed, lately?” Jake snorts.

She laughs, confidently pulls his hands from where they've clasped around his cold beer and deposits the box into his palms. He closes his hands around them compliantly and pockets them.

“Fresh start,” she smiles.

“Fresh start,” he agrees.

They drink until she can barely stand and she stumbles into a taxi with Rosa just in time to see him drop the box of cigarettes into a bin outside. He aims a drunken lopsided grin at her.

(It becomes a tradition over their eight years of being partners: something good happens, celebrate by going to Shaws at eight o’clock. She orders a beer or a martini and he orders whatever she’s having plus a bowl of nachos.)

Somehow, they become best friends.

And that was that, really.

 

* * *

 

Amy quickly learns that she sees things in words. Jake sees things in colours.

He sees anger in red and jealousy in green. He sees peace in pinks and secrecy in white. He sees pain in yellows and browns. He sees security in the blue of his detective uniform. His face glows red when he talks about his dad leaving. His eyes flash dark when he starts to panic.

She sees anger in spiteful words and jealousy in excuses. She sees peace in long talks and secrecy in silence. She sees pain in drafting essays and pouring out her heart. She sees security in promises and honesty. She talks constantly when she’s nervous and stutters when she panics.

They fit well together.

 

* * *

 

They’re standing under the too bright lights of the precinct’s near-empty car park, the concrete roof blocking out the stars she knows he loves. Jake’s clutching a box of defining possessions (a Rubix cube, a photo of the squad, a card from his mom, a Die-Hard figurine, a friendship bracelet from Charles). His knuckles are turning white from how hard he’s gripping the box, juxtaposing the calm demeanour showing on his face after confessing his feelings for her.

 

( _“Romantic styles,” he says._

 _"Oh,” she replies_.)

 

He goes to leave and she clutches at his arm as he moves away.

"Are you going to be okay?" She asks him, quietly, suddenly.

"Yeah. I’ll be fine."

"Are you scared?"

"Terrified. Not ready to die yet.”

(Amy Santiago almost laughs because she thinks Jake Peralta could beat Death at a wrestling match. He’s escaped it so many times before she thinks he might be immortal.)

She pulls the Rubix cube from his box, claiming it as her own and holds it close to her chest.

“Yeah, well, stay alive for us, Peralta, don’t die on us yet.”

He grins.

 

* * *

 

When he returns three months later, he’s vaguely out of shape and his hair doesn’t fall on his face in the right places. When he walks through the bullpen gate, he limps slightly.

He’s still loud and he’s still Jake but his mind is elsewhere.

The squad cheers and congratulates him in their own individual weird ways.

(Rosa smacks him over the head for taking so long. Gina pretends not to notice but takes a selfie and immediately refuses to work, resigns to finding the perfect filter to post it with. Sarge crushes him in a bear hug. Holt says “well done, Peralta” and orders him back to work.)

Amy greets him last, returns his Rubix cube to its rightful owner. His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes when she tells him she’s still with Teddy. He’s oddly quiet. She invites him – _orders him_ – to her flat for Chinese takeaway and they eat in silence, his leg resting solidly against hers on her sofa.

It’s the closest thing he’s had to normality in three months after literally joining the Mafia and he cries a little when he murmurs “one of them got away,” the unspoken fear that he could come after Jake floating in the air around them. And Amy, reliable Amy, pulls his head into her lap and strokes his hair, promising him they’ll keep him safe and they fall asleep peacefully at 3 am with Die Hard playing in the background and a soft ‘ _thank you_ ’ on his lips.

 

* * *

 

She cancels her plans with Kylie to visit her parents that weekend. Her mother asks the reason behind her spontaneous visit and Amy doesn’t know why she came herself. She sips coffee in her childhood home and tells her mother about Jake being undercover.

Her mother senses the conflicting tones of pride and worry in her voice and she understands quickly. She pulls Amy’s hand into her own.

“Amelia, dear, I know love when I hear it.”

* * *

 

Jake’s on his third case back since being undercover and he’s paired with Amy. They’ve been on a stakeout for three hours waiting to catch the man they know is guilty of murder and they’ve caught up on three months’ worth of separation and now she thinks she’s going a little bit insane.

"Do you ever think about parallel universes?" he asks suddenly.

"What?"

"You know like do you think there are other versions of our universe but something's different?"

"Maybe, I don't know."

"I think there are."

"That's cool, Jake."

"I know. I think there's one universe where you're actually interested in what I say."

She laughs loudly and she’s about to object to his accusations when she spots the criminal slinking out the back door and without thinking she falls into the ritualistic mantra of arresting the bastard.

They celebrate two weeks’ worth of work at Shaws that night and she slinks her arm around his in the booth.

Teddy texts and asks if she’s going to be making an appearance that night at his apartment.

She glances at the laughing figure next to her, watches as Jake reaches to poke her cheek. He’s three drinks into what she thinks will be an eight drink kind of night and she knows from years of experience that they’ll be drunk in under an hour.

Her arm, which had felt solid and safe around Jake’s, now feels oddly tight and betraying and the accusation of ‘ _cheater_ ’ gets caught in her throat.

Amy Santiago is many things but she is not a cheat.

Jake pokes her face again, laughs lightly.

She tucks her mobile phone back in her pocket, ignoring Teddy.

She’ll make an excuse in the morning.

She drinks.

* * *

 

Sometimes, after work, they go back to Jake’s apartment. He attempts to teach her to play his video games but she is effortlessly good at them and he gives up. They order Chinese take-out and watch cop shows and work on cases together.

Everything is good.

* * *

 

It's the boiling summer in which they’re preparing a case to prove a man’s innocence that Amy realises something is changing. Jake declines her invitation to Shaws after a breakthrough in favour of a date with a defence attorney called Sophia Perez.

At first, she thinks he’s joking. She laughs.

But the next week she watches him greet Sophia upon her sudden entry to the Nine-Nine and spin her around lightly, kissing her quickly on the lips. Amy feels the all too familiar burning of jealousy breeding in her stomach, clutching at her shaking ribs and making her cheeks turn red.

She tells herself it’s because they’re losing valuable time on their case.

* * *

 

(But when she hears some rookie attorneys in court saying a month later that Perez isn’t being given any of the good cases because she’s dating that immature cop from the Nine-Nine – “ _yeah, you know - big nose, curly hair, fully up his captain’s ass_ ” – she feels a hole dissolving in her stomach and is over-run by panic as she rushes off to smoke. Jake finds her twenty minutes later, raises an eyebrow at the cigarette loosely grasped between her fingers. He asks what's wrong and calms her down but she stays silent. She never tells him what she heard.)

(She never tells him that hearing people talk badly of him brings a pain in her heart she cannot even begin to fathom.)

* * *

 

Jake’s beyond drunk when he tells Amy that she’s his 'type' and she blurts out 'what the hell?' because really, what does that even mean?

“You’re dating Sophia,” she replies slowly. He nods.

“Yeah, God, I love her but I like you too still.”

If she were more honest she would tell him she likes him too even though he’s not her type and laugh with him about it. But somehow, she doesn't think she can laugh about it. She keeps quiet as she drops him home.

He realizes what he’s done, sinks into a state of silence and he doesn’t mention it again.

* * *

 

On her thirty-fifth birthday, Amy enters the precinct to the sound of confetti cannons and the low hum of music.

When she’s finally recovered from the shock and zoned back into reality, she blinks questioningly at Jake and silently waits for an explanation. He doesn’t supply one, instead choosing to shout ‘ _happy birthday!_ ’ into her ear as he pulls her into a hug.

She hears Holt remind everyone to return back to their work before wishing her a gracious happy birthday with a smile. The others relay their good wishes to her in turn, even Gina drops a card onto her desk with a grin. In her lunch break, she opens the cards and places them gently in a neat, uniformed row. She looks up just in time to see a red gift box being pushed over the barricade of the gap between their desks.

Jake smiles sheepishly and waits for her to open it.

When she does, her lap is laden with book vouchers, a new gun holster, notebooks and pens and her favourite bars of chocolate that she doesn’t even remember telling him about.

She stands quickly, kisses him lightly on the forehead.

“Thank you, Jake,” she sighs.

He blushes.

(She pretends not to see.)

(Gina raises an eyebrow at them.)

* * *

 

All too soon, Amy breaks up with Teddy.

And she feels incredibly guilty.

Because Teddy is... nice. Teddy is safe. And she likes him, and she likes kissing him. She likes watching history documentaries with him and going to the library. She likes going on walks and going to bars. It’s just when they do all those things, she kind of wishes she was doing them with somebody else. She wishes when she talks about him she could remember more than just his generic eyes and average laughter and _Pilsners_.

They break up in a storm consisting of Jake admitting he used to like her and her confessing she did too and there’s a flurry of _"I'm sorry's_ " and an utterance of " _it's okay_."

(She wishes that he would give her a better reason, that he was horrible or rude but he's not he's just too nice and too plain and she wishes he was someone else.)

And that's that, really.

* * *

 

It's September, she's still 35 but he's turned 36 and, on his birthday, he has the Nine-Nine and the neighbouring squads over to his apartment. They get _super_ drunk and the music is way too loud but Jake’s been doing birthday shots with Rosa for the last hour and no one notices Amy disappear.

“Ames?” Jake calls out when he finally realises.

He finds her twenty minutes later, lying dramatically in his empty bathtub, fully dressed and donning a party hat with trails of confetti caught in her hair. And he's exasperated because - okay, maybe she's being just a little bit unreasonable.

“Ames..." he slurs, “what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“You disappeared, I missed you,” he pouts, “are you sad?”

“No, it’s just-" (Calm. Breathe. Think of a reason, quick.) "I’m tired." (Good one, Amy.)

He’s so drunk he can barely hold himself up but not drunk enough to believe her lie. He looks at her through frowning dark brows and squinting eyes. His eyes are kind of like a crystal ball; like the ones she saw in films in dark cinemas with her brothers as a kid. She realises they change colour in coordination with what he wears and how he feels. Dark black smart button-up shirts and curiosity create deep, dark eyes- like today.

(She also realises friends shouldn't realise these things.)

“Okay,” he says, choosing to accept the obvious lie and instead leaning against the door-frame casually, “okay, well that’s good.”

“Good?” She asks. She huffs childishly, crosses her arms, turns her head away, stares at the white tiles that don't perfectly line up. When she glances back he looks upset. She ignores the sharp daggers of regret that erupt in her chest when she upsets him.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging. “I mean it’s my birthday and you’re being sad in here and you won’t tell me why. I should be sad, I’m the one who’s nearly forty."

Jake sighs, exasperated, and leans forward, brushes the yellows and blues of confetti out of her hair and thinks. He grins.

“Amy Santiago, what you need is to stop thinking about me and just get really drunk.”

She's silent again, biting her lip in a way that she knows will make it bleed but she doesn't care and he's staring and her brain is racing because... He knows she likes him. He knows, he must know, he can’t know. She can’t bear the thought of him knowing. It makes her want the ground to open and swallow her whole.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she blurts out.

“No really, come on Ames, you’ve gotta – wait what?”

“I said you’re right.”

He blinks.

“If I could remember where my phone is I would record you saying that. Come on, stop being stupid on your own and start being stupid with me.”

He pulls her from the grave-like bathtub and squeezes her hand in a way he thinks is comforting but for her brings a hammer to her chest. She excuses herself when they reach the bottom of the stairs, he's long let go of her hand but the touch lingers.

She surveys the scene, pulls the party hat from her hair.

(Rosa is threatening someone, Charles is doing karaoke with Gina, Chris from the Nine-Four is making out with a girl on Jake’s massage chair, someone is smoking as they sit haphazardly out the window.)

“I broke up with Teddy,” she shouts over the music.

“Sophia broke up with me,” he replies, cheerfully.

He cracks open two bottles of beer, hands one to her.

They drink.

* * *

 

She wakes up in the morning with a headache that isn’t threatening to leave any time soon and feels Jake’s tall figure pressed up against her on his sofa.

Gina is asleep on the floor with Charles’ legs messily overlapping hers. She’s distantly, vaguely aware that it is raining outside. She curls closer into Jake, feels him respond in kind and goes back to sleep.

When Rosa eventually drags them awake and away from each other three hours later, she wishes him a late happy birthday, graces him with his presents, ibuprofen and a coffee.

(In all the years she’s known him she’s never managed to get over his absurd ‘ _four sugars, four creams_ ’ rule in his coffee.)

 

* * *

 

She cries for two hours at home when Holt announces his immediate departure from the Nine-Nine before she gives in and drives to Jake’s apartment.

When Charles finally leaves and she feels her eyes threaten to fill with tears again, Jake pulls her into a hug and kisses her lightly on the forehead. She reflexively bites her lip, remembering how he kissed her earlier that day.

He’s surprisingly un-Jake-like. He pulls her into his guest bedroom and gently hands her his NYPD jumper, a pair of jogging bottoms and a spare pair of glasses she left at his house months before. He passes her a cup of tea and her favourite chocolates that are some weird vegan brand that he buys just for when she’s over and he’s so nice that it makes her cry a little more.

They fall asleep on his sofa and begrudgingly travel to work together the next day and it’s the first time she thinks about having a future with Jake as a solid, reliable force in it.

 

* * *

 

They kill their new boss and word travels fast and soon all of Amy’s brothers in the police force are calling her, shocked that their dear, sweet, little sister has literally _killed a police captain_.

It takes three hours of blackmailing and negotiating to keep them from telling their mother about her relationship with Jake.

* * *

 

Jake gets suspended by The Vulture and insists that he cannot bring himself to get out of bed. Amy does what she always does in these situations and calls Gina.

Gina, as it turns out, has kept a mental bank of information regarding Jake Peralta in all the years she’s known him and relays advice based on a distant memory from when they were twenty years old and Jake got kicked out of class at the academy for defending Rosa. Gina says cheerfully “go get him, girl” when Amy thanks her. It’s oddly reassuring.

“Gina is taking you out for a drink tonight,” she tells him, stroking his hair gently. She impulsively places a gold sticker lightly on his chest before she leaves.

(Amy lives and dies by the fact that a sticker can solve any bad mood and says as much to Jake.)

(Jake lives and dies by the fact that he doesn’t need stickers he only needs Amy Santiago and says as much as she pulls on her shoes.)

* * *

 

Amy Santiago goes undercover for two weeks in a prison. Jake falls apart a little bit.

When she returns – minus the bump – she finds that Jake has been pretty much living in her apartment as evident by the pizza boxes cascading out of her bin and the abundance of blankets usually stored neatly in her cupboard are covering her bed.

(She learnt very early on in their relationship that Jake sleeps in a burrito-like cocoon of blankets so she bought four extra ones.)

(Two of which are covered in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They are so tragically un-Amy that Jake takes it as a sign that he is here to stay.)

* * *

 

They’re just getting into the swing of their relationship when Figgis happens and Jake is swept off into a witness protection scheme.

In one day, Amy’s lost her boyfriend and her captain and before Jake’s even been bundled onto a plane, Gina has told her that she’s welcome to stay at her house for a few days.

She grabs her work clothes, three of his hoodies and his pyjamas from his drawer in her apartment and shoves them into a bag alongside her toiletries.

She grabs her keys and her spare keys and her _spare_ , _spare_ keys and switches off all the plugs.

(She’s hit with the realisation that her beloved flat doesn’t feel safe anymore and panic rises in her throat before she has even double locked her front door.)

 

* * *

 

She spends the next few weeks hopping between Gina’s couch, Terry and Sharon’s spare bedroom, the bar with Rosa and spending whole nights at the precinct, working on his case.

It’s a Tuesday when Kevin invites her over for tea and they watch a new documentary on classical musicians. She sleeps in their spare bedroom and becomes acutely aware that Kevin misses Holt as much as - if not more than – she misses Jake. She leaves a bunch of flowers and a plain scone on his kitchen counter as a thank you.

(Amy Santiago is nothing but consistent even in times of crisis.)

* * *

 

She’s staying at Rosa’s when her phone goes off at 2 am and she wakes up in a panic fearing the unknown number to be Figgis in the event that he has deemed her his next target. She mutters a half asleep “ _hello_ ” and waits for a few seconds before she hears quiet crying down the phone.

“Jake, oh my God, you’re putting yourself in danger doing this.”

“Needed to hear your voice,” he confesses, his voice shaking.

She asks “are you okay?” and she’s surprised at how calm her voice is.

“Not really. Not a good night. Wanna come home.”

She doesn’t know what to say to this and her chest burns as she cries noiselessly because this is what she fears: him being hurt and hearing the sadness cover him and not being able to do anything about it.

They talk for another four minutes because any longer and the marshal would be alerted to track his phone to see who he was calling at 2 in the morning.

She knows it won’t help but she murmurs “I love you” for the first time in four months - for the first time in their relationship - and she hears him sigh slightly.

“I’ll be home soon,” he promises.

* * *

 

(Rosa awoke upon hearing Amy’s panicked voice down the hall from her room and she listens silently from outside her guest bedroom door to their phone call. She waits for five minutes before she slinks quietly into the room. She slowly puts an arm around her crying friend.)

(“I miss him too,” she confesses.)

* * *

 

Jake returns home on a Tuesday with a bullet-hole in his leg and blond-streaked hair and her hand remains securely wrapped in the whole time they’re on the plane.

Behind them, Kevin and Holt mirror their movements and, for the first time in six months, she feels herself breath easily.

* * *

 

Amy is barely surprised when her father and her boyfriend don’t get along but they solve a case and Pimento wins a bet so she counts this year’s Thanksgiving as a success. Life rolls on as normal.

* * *

 

Amy curses the worst words she knows in dedication to Lieutenant Hawkins who threatens to put both her boyfriend and best friend in jail and Jake is painfully calm and characteristically humorous that she wants to scream.

* * *

 

Until he’s not calm and she’s not sure which is worse.

“I can’t go to prison, Amy, I won’t survive in prison, oh my God, can you imagine, me? In prison?”

They’re waiting outside the courtroom, hands securely encased in each other’s and he’s borderline hysterical. She can feel the beginning of his panic attack before he himself even realises he’s breathing too heavily.

(Sign number one that Jake is freaking out: he forgets how to breathe.)

“You’re not going to prison, Jakey, we’re going to get you and Rosa out of this.”

She leans her head gently on his shoulder, feels the soft resistance of stubble on his chin against her head.

(Sign number two that Jake is freaking out: not shaving.)

“Where is Rosa?” she asks suddenly.

“With Gina, partly to keep her company and partly to make sure she doesn’t either run off or kill Hawkins.”

“That’s our Rosa,” Amy smiles.

“God, I’m going to miss you,” he says softly.

It throws Amy off balance. This isn’t Jake, this isn’t her Jake. Jake is all edges and humour and self-deprecating jokes. Sure, he’s affectionate and romantic and kind but he’s not prone to sudden declarations of truths.

“You don’t have to miss me. I’ll be driving you home straight after this. We’ll watch Die Hard and get drunk and order take out.”

“Chinese?”

“Of course.”

They hear the familiar ‘ding’ of the court bell, signalling five minutes until court returns to session. A familiar sound in a devastatingly unfamiliar situation that feels like a countdown to a bomb going off or an execution being fulfilled.

Amy runs a finger through one of his curls as she looks at him properly for the first time. She sees the darkness around his eyes, the shaking hands, the lines burrowing their way into his forehead every time he frowns. Jake’s been through all the worst possible consequences of being a cop – being suspended, being undercover, being in witness protection. He’s been shot, stabbed, held hostage. But nothing like this. ‘ _This_ ’ being the unspoken possibility that he might go to jail, might serve fifteen years but, then again, he might die in prison as a result of a revenge-filled criminal who hates cops or an anti-Semitic murderer who picks him out of the crowd.

(Jake’s not going to prison though, she reminds herself, he’s not.)

* * *

 

Jake goes to prison.

 _Jake Peralta_ _goes to prison._

 _Her_ Jake Peralta goes to prison.

* * *

 

She walks around their apartment like a ghost for three days, doesn’t feel the need to call Holt and explain her absence, doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep.

When she returns to work, Charles has somehow found time between crying and working and dying his now white hair to make her lunch and dinner and has left it on her desk in a neat little Tupperware box with her name on it. When she opens her desk drawer she discovers Terry has left a drawing of her and Jake from Cagney and Lacey. When she checks her phone, Gina has sent her a playlist of upbeat songs to cheer her up.

She follows Gina to their secret bathroom when she sees her try and silently slide quietly away from her desk and cries with her. She buys Charles a coffee and a fancy pastry he likes. She draws a picture in return for Cagney and Lacey and buys flowers for Terry and Sharon.

(She reminds herself they all miss Jake and Rosa too – Charles has lost his best friends, Gina has lost her childhood friend in the form of Jake and her most trusted confidant in Rosa. She reminds herself they all need to get through this together.)

* * *

 

She can only visit him every three weeks but Jake somehow gets hold of a phone and in her breaks, she whispers down the phone that she misses him and tells him about the precinct until Charles snatches the phone out of her hand to update him on Nikolaj.

It’s not enough but it’s better than nothing.

 

* * *

 

It takes them eight weeks but Hawkins decides to transport diamonds and when they go to arrest her, Amy has to return to the police car they arrived in because she fears she might punch her in the face if she gets too close.

 

* * *

 

He proposes to her at Halloween and she feels a new kind of normality bracing her life.

She can’t stop pulling her ring on and off her finger and grinning at it.

She looks over at Jake when they’re in bed that night and notices he was doing the same thing.

“Oh my god, we’re getting married,” he smiles.

* * *

 

It's Thursday and she’s stayed late at work to finish his paperwork to ease him back into police work when she calls him telling him she’s coming home, he doesn’t pick up.

And she's worried, obviously, because they've known each other for what, like, seven years and she’s only had him back for a week and he’s never not answered her calls.

She calls him once, twice, three times and she only hears heavy breaths and low sobs on the fourth ring. She knows a panic attack when she hears one.

She runs quickly out of the 99th precinct and ignores three stop signs on the drive to his flat.

* * *

 

"I’m sorry, I stayed late. You should have called me straight away," she whispers.

He shakes his head, curls up tighter into his knees.

They're sitting up against a wall in his room, she's not touching him in any way, sitting with a clear gap in between them as he takes heavy breaths, knees to his chin and eyes closed tight and his old NYPD hoodie hanging loosely around his shoulders.

“Didn’t want to worry you,” he whispers in a low voice. He's surrounded by files and case studies and photos of him in prison taken by insiders working with Hawkins that he didn’t even know were being taken (didn’t even know he was being watched by her) and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s being watched right now even though he’s safely in their bed, back at home.

Amy feels panic rising in her chest but she was uttering a mantra of quiet ‘ _it's_ _okay’_ s and breathing slowly with him before she even registered what she was doing.

 

* * *

 

An hour later, after she'd calmed him down and pushed his too long, still blond-tipped hair out of his eyes and brought him a cup of coffee, he’d relaxed enough to let her lie next to him in bed.

He kisses her suddenly, quickly. They accidentally meet in the dark and she's not exactly happy but she's not sad, neither of them are calm, neither of them are smiling when they meet. It feels like hours and lasts seconds.

“I love you,” he whispers, almost urgently.

She wonders if she dreamt the whole thing because the silhouettes of monsters and blurring silver street lamps against the windows feels all too familiar as if she is in a dream world. But the figure pressing against her side and his shallow, sleepy breaths and the familiar smell of his aftershave and candy bars and coffee tells her she is awake.

She falls asleep at 3:15 am and he doesn't sleep, and they don’t talk about his panic attacks again.

They never get the chance.

* * *

 

Two days later, and he’s only just been conditionally certified to go back into the field and sent out on a case but Amy Santiago spends the whole afternoon throwing up in the Ninety-Ninth precinct’s secret bathroom before she finally allows Rosa to drive her home. At home, she collapses on her ( _their_ ) bed, grabbing at his soft, familiar blue hoodie like her life depended on it and crying, choking on tears and not eating and not answering any of the squad’s calls.

 

Jake Peralta: a beloved son; her boyfriend and fiancé; the decided creator of her happiness; dead at thirty-eight.

 

A routine arrest gone wrong, three cops held hostage by a man who was just a little too trigger happy who agreed with the idea that Jake should remain but Charles and Amy should be allowed to go free.

(Basic negotiating, minimise casualties, the perfect plan.)

And the ever-level-headed Rosa pulled a furious Amy out of the building to join the rest of the Nine-Nine waiting outside.

_(“Rosa! Jake is being stupid! I can’t leave him on his own!”_

_“No, Santiago, he’s being smart and you know it.”)_

Amy’s explaining the situation to Captain Holt when a gunshot interrupts her train of thought and Terry yanks her back by her arm when she screams

“Jake!” and begins to run back towards the abandoned factory.

 _(_ “ _You’re not wearing a vest, Santiago!” Terry reminds her.)_

In the end, James Vinto is found guilty of murdering a police officer but Amy knows she’ll never be unable to ignore the fact that she left Jake alone to die and couldn’t save him. Couldn’t save Jake’s mother’s happiness and would make her grieve over the early death of her too-loud, too-impulsive child.

She realises love and loss, and grief and graves all go together and she forgets what it’s like to feel okay for a long time.

Jake Peralta is dead.

* * *

The funeral is hell and she’s asked to give a eulogy and she finds that she can’t even bring herself to stand up, let alone speak.

There’s a couple hundred people there. Amy lists off people she recognises in her head rather than focusing on the service – Sophia Perez is crying amidst a line of defence attorneys, there’s a couple of USPIS and firefighters who pay their respects to someone they used to consider an enemy, most of the neighbouring precincts, even FBI members who worked with him when he was undercover. Karen and Roger sit near her gripping each other tight.

And there’s Charles.

And Rosa.

And Gina.

And Terry.

All crying, all distraught, all alone.

They all give her hugs but she’s numb to the comfort they’re trying to give her.

“Let’s go get drunk,” Holt grimaces.

(Holt misses Jake, she realises. As much as Jake viewed Holt as a father figure, Holt loved Jake as a son. He’s grieving too.)

(They all are.)

* * *

 

Amy returns to work immediately and is trapped in a precinct that haunts her and hallways that mock her and moves along cases working with people who tiptoe around her like she’s a bomb. She is trapped with a smashed phone where she threw it at the wall in fury at the unfairness of the world that means her playlist jumps on track seven of an old Taylor Swift album - his favourite song. If the universe admitted to playing cruel jokes on her, this was the worst one because she could only listen to his favourite song a couple of times before sobbing and every time she looks at his empty desk for too long; every time she follows the roads they used to work cases on; every time she is given a sad glance from a well-meaning friend, so like, everywhere, she sobs. The song doesn't work anymore. It's just. Broken.

She decides that as soon as she is able to she’s going to move far, far away.

(To Pluto, perhaps. If possible. It was his favourite planet.)

 

* * *

Three days after the funeral, someone rummages through Jake’s desk to find mislabeled evidence and finds a Will because if Jake Peralta was unorganised in life he sure as hell wasn’t going to be in death.

Holt reads it in his office and Amy watches through the gap in his blinds and his eyes shift slowly, carefully along the scrawled words. It’s signed neatly by Sophia Perez and something about Jake wanting familiarity even in death strikes a cord with Holt.

There’s not much but his money is kept in savings, his apartment is given to Amy, certain items are given to Charles or Nikolaj or Gina or Rosa or Cagney or Lacey or Terry.

Holt tells Amy that Jake orders her to be put under ‘ _special watch_ ’ in the case of his death and when Holt asks her what Jake might have meant by that she collapses onto his office floor.

She’s signed off duty for two weeks and signed off on holding a gun until she's deemed mentally able.

(The gun remains in Holt’s safe for three months. Amy Santiago once threw herself into her police work in times of crisis but everything’s gone to shit and there’s no joy left in that.)

* * *

 

She’s sent to see a shrink.

"Do you blame yourself for what happened?" the woman with the clipboard and green eyes asks gently one day. The woman has too kind eyes and a too wide smile and a tight grey skirt and shirt. She thinks Jake would have scoffed at her but he would have liked her eyes. He always liked colours and green was a clear favourite.

She shakes her head firmly, frowns slightly and opens her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out.

She goes home and insists to the captain that she doesn't need to go back to departmental mandatory therapy and she doesn't see the grey building or the grey woman again.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up at 3:53 am with a scream, hears the echoing of gunshots from her dream.

She calls in sick for the first time in seven years and doesn’t return for three days.

(Holt pretends not to hear her voice shaking.)

 

* * *

 

She decides to leave the Nine-Nine. She says goodbye to them all.

Goodbye to the woman with the ripped jeans and leather jackets, the loud woman with the phone constantly attached to her hands, the man with the sympathetic eyes and huge muscles, and the man with the new kid and a sad glint in his eyes.

(They try and comfort her through their congratulations, try to remind her of better times with them and him. One of them reminds her of the time they both came in soaked in the rain after deciding to chase a perp in September showers. Another reminds her of how he dyed her hair bright blue simply because she dared him too. And suddenly she is crying and quickly walking far away because she remembers. Remembers being sent home by Holt after soaking his office carpets and dragging half of New York’s rain into it, remembers washing bright blue out of his hair, tiredly resting against his bathtub in fits of hysterics.)

She composes herself and says goodbye to Captain Holt last, says thank you for all he taught her. He says thank you for all she’s done and wishes her well for the future.

She exits quickly, can't be bothered to write goodbyes or drink at Shaws or promise to see them all again.

(She feels guilty because they miss Jake too but they're not running away.)

But that’s what she does, she thinks, she lets people down.

(She let Jake down.)

She just wants to leave, to go anywhere.

Pluto sounds good.

 

* * *

 

She's thirty-six a month later. She objects to a party from her new precinct, the Eight-Three, and retreats to her new apartment for the whole day. Her parents call her at 6, the way they do every year.

It feels more like a condolence than a celebration. They send her presents, carefully chosen, nothing to do with him. There's no gifts on her desk, no boy sitting, grinning at her waiting for her to arrive like there had been for the last eight years before it all went wrong. No card that says " _happy b'day idiot_ ," signed with a smile and a kiss.

Just... quiet.

 

* * *

 

Sophia comes into the Eight-Three to collect some evidence. She hugs Amy and offers to take her out to lunch. She can’t bring herself to decline.

They sip lemonade and eat expensive pasta and talk about their memories of Jake.

When Jake had told her about Sophia, all that time ago, his words had burned her heart and messed with her head. She'd smiled, said to him that it was great that they were dating (her heart was racing, palms were sweating, felt like a hole was burning in her chest the size of his favourite planet) and she didn’t care, really, (she cared, she cared, she always cared, but not for the reasons he would have expected) so they went to work and didn’t speak of it again.

If she thinks about it now, she can't even fully remember why she hated Sophia so much, only that she broke his heart and he wasn’t the same for weeks afterwards.

She gives Sophia her number and promises to meet up with her again soon.

(Before she leaves she thanks Sophia for signing Jake’s Will and for looking out for him. Sophia smiles.)

 

* * *

 

People at her new squad comment offhandedly that she talks about Jake too often after he's gone. She thinks it makes them uncomfortable when she mentions what his favourite planet was and how his favourite show has been cancelled and comments on expensive things he would love but never buy in shops.

They tell her it’s okay to miss him. People aren't as stupid as she thinks they are.

 

* * *

 

Jake’s mom timidly invites her over, persuades her with the promise of some good food and a film.

She’s oddly comfortable with Karen, she actually laughs during dinner and she tells her a story about Jake without hearing her voice break.

They’re three glasses of wine into the evening when Karen asks Amy to go into Jake’s old room.

(She instantly panics.)

Karen falters slightly, takes a deep breath and tells Amy to take whatever she wants from Jake’s room which has remained largely untouched since he left.

(The panic lessens.)

 

* * *

 

Jake’s old room is exactly as she imagined it to be. She sits lightly on his bed, curls her legs under her and looks around. Her heart is racing in a way that she has become all too familiar with recently.

There’s photos lacing every wall of younger Jake’s and unmistakable Gina’s. There’s shots of his academy graduation with Rosa and high-school dances with Jenny Gildenhorn. There’s a notebook next to his bed, half filled with doodles and ideas for a cop film he always said he wanted to write. She quickly memorises his handwriting: the scribbled swirls on the 's's and the messy loops on the _'_ o's. She looks intensely at his carefully chosen colours to break up his waterfall of notes into blocks of red and blue and green. If she knows Jake (and she does, she knows him so well) she knows there’ll be pens in any of his jumper pockets, a habit stemming from elementary school as he’s forever scribbling reminders and notes to himself along his arms. She pulls back his wardrobe door carefully and sees a row of checked button-up shirts, what she thinks are the worlds tightest jeans and an impressive collection of sneakers. She runs a hand across them quickly, feeling familiar material under her fingertips and is instantly surrounded by the scent of the same brand of washing powder he still uses (used). She pulls out a bright blue checked shirt that would be too small for him now but would fit her perfectly. She ties it neatly around her waist. There’s an old leather jacket at the far end and, sure enough, there’s a pen tucked away in the pocket.

She flips it over in her fingers a few times.

Amy Santiago does what she does best: organise.

She quickly lists the items she would take from Jake’s room amongst the scrappy doodles in his notebook.

(It’s the calmest she’s felt in weeks.)

 

\- One blue shirt

\- An almost empty bottle of aftershave that smells like oak and him

\- A photo from next to his bed: the squad, smiling together the first week she joined the Nine-Nine

\- A small selection of vinyl from the extensive collection on his shelf

\- A small collection of photos of him at the academy, soft-cheeked and long haired

\- The old camera hanging on the back of his door

 

She says goodbye to his mother who hugs her tightly and sadly jokes that they should meet up for a coffee or possibly something stronger some time. The joke doesn't land so she replies quickly and smiles.

* * *

 

Her Facebook account chimes with an invite to Gina’s birthday party. She hits decline.

* * *

 

She is offered the role of Sergeant six months after she joins the Eight-Three. She goes home with a spring in her step and when her parents and every one of her seven brothers calls to congratulate her, she actually starts to feel a little normal.

 

* * *

 

It's almost four months later that she walks into her empty apartment, humming an old Taylor Swift song after a late night at work to find _him_ lying on her sofa hugging a pillow like he used to.

She blinks three times before passing out.

* * *

 

She wakes up to find Jake Peralta (the beloved son, her boyfriend and the decided creator of her happiness who was dead at thirty-eight, remember?) looming over her and she has a near heart attack. She's sure she's gone insane and there's a dull pain in her head partly where she fell and partly with the shock of him kneeling in over her. It’s the middle of the night and it's a good thing she lived alone because if she woke anyone up with the claims that her dead boyfriend was eating her favourite chocolate in her lounge she’d surely be sent to a therapist and be put on suicide watch (again.)

“Hey,” he says slowly. There's frozen peas cooling her head and she's sitting cross-legged against a cabinet on her kitchen floor, facing the pale figure of him. He repeats it again, softer this time: “hey.”

“I don’t get it,” she just keeps mumbling. “I don’t get it. How are you here? You’re dead.”

“Yeah,” he sighs bitterly, “I know. Okay. Yeah. Thanks for the reminder.”

“You’re dead. I buried you. I couldn’t save you." Her voice breaks.

“I’m not dead,” he says simply.

She laughs.

He stares.

 

* * *

 

His hair is longer, covers his eyes in the same way it did when they first met. He’s got a bruise painting a cosmos above his eye and a new scar cascading down his left cheek.

She takes a moment to properly inspect the ghost. ( _Ghost? Zombie? What even is he?_ ) His shoulders are wider and the soft stomach she used to lie on is toughened. He’s painfully thin and she can smell the familiar echo of smoke in his hair and locked in his clothes when he moves. He smiles lightly at her.

“Fuck,” she says. She pokes his face four times and feels his sharp cheekbones against her fingertips.

“Ames, babe, I’m real.”

She flinches.

* * *

 

"Explain," is the first thing she says when he's sat comfortably on her sofa, lying on his back, legs across her lap, head on his favourite pillow, arms on his chest, the way he used to. She’s facing the neat bookshelves lining the wall, looking for a distraction or possibly a clue to show she is a dream. She finds none and feels panic rising in her chest.

"Your hairs got longer," is all he says, "I like it like that, it's pretty."

It's so painfully familiar to hear him blurt out compliments and for her to shudder at the feeling in her stomach that she can't quite explain and it's so normal that she wants to scream because it hurt to hear him say nice things when he was alive but it's so much worse now he’s dead.

She can’t even bring herself to say ‘ _thanks_.’

* * *

 

She removes his legs from her lap and lowers herself carefully to the floor, resting her back against the sofa he lays on, feels a tug on her hair as he gently pulls on a strand, the way he used to. A comforting gesture.

“You left the Nine-Nine,” his voice is suddenly strange, like - it’s almost angry and empty and sad and shadowed by doubt because he always ( _was_ ) plagued by abandonment issues and her leaving brings his issues to the forefront of her mind.

“You weren’t there, I couldn’t work there without you,” she tells him quickly.

“You left Charles and Gina and Rosa," he bites back.

“You left us,” she states coldly. He drops the brown curl he had wrapped around his finger like it could leave a burn.

“I came back, didn’t I?”

She looks up at the ceiling, eyes tracing the lines in which as a child she saw shapes and stories, gripping her palms as she balls her hands into fists in a way that her nails must draw blood. She feels her breaths quicken and speaks.

"I miss you more than I thought I ever could,” she admits, “I mean... Everything was just so empty. You just went, you were just gone. I couldn’t save you, you sacrificed yourself for me and Charles." She swallowed quickly, turning around to consider him from behind shy eyelashes. "Everything felt wrong and now it feels right again. Even though you’re, what, a ghost? You being here but you're not here, you're some kind of ghost or somehow my brain telling me you are here. And you know what, whatever you are, somehow that seems more normal than you being dead.”

She pauses for a long time: thinks about all the words she desperately wants to say, thinks about the world she lives in. She thinks the universe is playing a cruel joke on her. God, how unfair it all is. She knows some people unfairly live, some people unfairly die and terrible things happen to everyone and she is living it, breathing it, being it and -

“You were in danger. I had to fake being shot to go undercover. They knew you were too close to me, you would have been an easy target.”

“If that was true, you would have told me,” she answers weakly.

“Amy Santiago, you know the rules better than anyone. You’re not my wife yet. You know I couldn’t.”

(God, she thinks, she was going to marry him, she was going to be his _wife_.)

“The rules don’t matter. You’re dead.”

* * *

 

“If that was true," Amy asks much later, "who wanted you dead?”

“Leo. Leo Iannucci. He was biding his time until some of his boys got out of prison. They knew I was the snitch when I went undercover with them years ago.”

“I don’t believe you.”

* * *

 

He follows her around her ( _their_ ) apartment as she shakes slightly and wanders through cold rooms and watches her do police paperwork at 1 am. He tells her she should go to sleep, she shouldn’t work this late and he continues to reprimand her until he notices she is glaring at him with such anger that he falls silent.

"Are those my notes?" he asks quietly, peering over files with his name labelled on them.

"Yeah." It makes her feel safe, having him back, which, yeah, is probably really messed up. She knows she’ll wake up in the morning and it’ll all have been a horrible dream and he’ll disappear so she decides not to sleep. She doesn't tell him she doesn't sleep much anymore anyway.

He soon starts the constant stream of dialogue again though - making offhand comments and being a sarcastic pain to the point where she has to fight the urge to just roll her eyes or crack a smile because then everything would be too normal and she won't let it go back to normal. She's still grieving and if she lets it go back to normal she thinks she’s lost it.

She hasn't lost _it_ , she's just lost _him_.

But he sits by her like a second shadow and she lets him talk about anything but death and his made up excuses for his year-long disappearance, instead listening to his oh-so-familiar voice. She scoffs when he asks how she has been.

 

* * *

 

"Are you wearing my Academy shirt?"

"Huh? Yeah, your mum let me take it, and some other stuff. I mean, whatever I wanted."

"I'm glad she did."

"Hmm?"

"Yeah. What else did you take?"

She shows him the list, categorized alphabetically and by size: the notebook, the shirt, the books, the music, the photos - all placed neatly in a box under her bed, labelled ‘Jake.'

He inspects them all carefully, looking at them familiarly and clutching them tightly to his chest.

He smiles widely for the first time that night.

 

* * *

 

She wonders if ghost-Jake ignores the obvious changes in herself, in her home, in her existence.

* * *

 

(He does.)

* * *

 

"You left my Die-Hard posters up."

"Yeah."

“Thanks.”

* * *

 

“You’re the sergeant at the Eight-Three?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Ames, why didn’t you tell me straight away, that’s amazing!”

“Hmm.”

 

* * *

 

"How's your family?"

"Fine."

"My mom?"

"Still not fine."

“She’s gonna punch me when I go and see her.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

* * *

 

"You threw all my candy out!"

"It’s been a year, Jake. You’re not coming back, I don’t need to keep them."

"I’m not dead, Ames."

“Sure.”

* * *

 

She finally collapses onto her bed at 4 am, unceremoniously crushing the soft pile of pillows and papers and letters and pens and she feels his hand run gently through her hair and she falls asleep peacefully for the first time in a year.

* * *

 

She wakes up two hours later to both of her alarms ringing in her ears.

She washes her hair, gets dressed, checks her emails.

(Normal.)

She walks downstairs, makes a coffee, see’s ghost-Jake sprawled out on the sofa watching TV.

(Definitely not normal.)

“You took your time,” he huffs, clearly unimpressed as he folds his long arms against his chest.

She shrugs. “I thought I had woken up but you’re still here so I must be dreaming. When am I going to wake up, Jake?”

A look of immediate concern flashes across his face and she is shaking again and he notices so he tries to make everything normal for her in a way that makes her skin crawl.

“I’m bored," he sighs, “you don’t have any orange soda for my cereal anymore.”

"You’re always bored. You _were_ always bored," she corrects herself, “and I haven't bought orange soda since the day you died.”

He's not dressed the same as the night before she realises. His off grey shirt and jeans have long been disbanded in favour of black jeans and his old NYPD jumper she wears when he misses him because he loves it ( _loved_ , dammit).

“Yeah, well, I’ll buy some tomorrow, I mean, at least I won’t be bored, there’s more to do now I’m alive again,” he says jokingly, lightly, almost like it was an inside joke between the two of them and she just shakes her head sadly and turns away.

“You’re still dead, Jake.”

It’s been a year since the murder, a year since a bullet ricochet through his head, a year since his eyes were closed under white, too-bright hospital lights and the pain still hasn't gone away after she lost the boy who meant the whole, entire world to her.

(She never told him she felt like that. It’s too late for anything now.)

It’s been a year, and she's grown and changed and she still wants to forget the Nine-Nine and the precinct and the small area of New York they protected and served.

* * *

 

Apparently, ghost-Jake didn’t get the memo that she wants to leave the Nine-Nine behind.

“Can you drive me to the Nine-Nine?” he asks sheepishly, “I’ve been dead for a year, I don’t exactly have a car anymore.”

She laughs impulsively.

“God, Jake, I can’t wait to show up at the precinct after a year and tell them my fiancé has come back from the dead. They’ll think I’ve really lost it.”

“I still wanna marry you, Ames.”

“Sure, dead boy." 

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes, in the last year, she's wondered what it's like to die.

She’s thought about death and the uncontrollable ending all stories, all lives, reach. She’s thought about the few lives she’s ended. She’s thought about the lives of family members she’s said goodbye to. She feels twenty again, faced with the existential reckoning her brain brought to her in the midst of academy work.

The night before, as she sat haphazardly on the windowsill with her feet dangling down as she smoked, Jake told her that he thought about her every day he was 'dead', that he kept a photo of her in his wallet, that the only thing keeping him alive was her.

(And she laughs at that because how could she be the one keeping him alive when he couldn’t even save him all those months ago. When she left him in a warehouse to be shot, to die alone.)

“Ames, you said you were gonna stop smoking. It’s gonna kill you.”

“Shut up, you didn’t smoke and you’re dead so what’s the point.”

“I smoked when I was undercover.”

“I could smell it on you when you first materialised in my lounge,” she recalls.

He pauses suddenly, his hands twitching as he glances down at the cigarette loosely grasped between her fingers. She notices and flicks it carelessly out the window. He’s about to deny his death again but she gets up and gets herself a drink because it’s hard to really feel rational, to feel like you’re alive, when you are in the presence of the dead.

 

* * *

 

She used to recall the nights spent squashed up on his collapsing sofa, back in the Nine-Nine days, back at twenty-six years old in his nan’s old apartment when they worked on cases and she could feel her partner - her best friend - pressed up against her (warm, alive, hot in the rare Brooklyn sun), and she could feel anything other than grief at all.

Now, it’s like - Well, things are different, obviously.

They have to be different because she’s still waiting for him to disappear but she’s driving down familiar roads to a precinct that she arguably grew up in to take a dead man to see her old friends. He’s curled up in the passenger seat looking softly at her as he bites his chapped lip.

(She thinks desperately back to a time when his lips held life when they kissed in the dark of the evidence locker with nobody to tell but the creaks in the floorboards listening to their secrets.)

“I love you," he says softly.

There’s a kind of quiet around them, and she knows straight away: she's still in love.

But he is dead. Don’t ever forget that, she tells herself fiercely, don’t ever forget that the man you love is dead, the boy you love is dead.

She doesn’t reply and something like sadness flickers across his face.

 

* * *

 

 

(He kissed her in the dark when they were sad in an evidence locker, and, in hindsight, that was the beginning of the end.)

“You’re miserable," he says when she pulls into the precinct parking lot.

“I’m not miserable,” she argues, “I’m not.”

She thinks it's ridiculous: arguing with a ghost in her car in the parking lot of her old workplace because the ghost told her to go there.

“You are,” he sighs, “you’re tired all the time and you’re still grieving. It’s as if I just died when it's been what? A year? And I’m right here-"

“You’re not here,” she snaps. “I’m not still grieving. I’m just-”

He doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand the red hue that’s quickly suffocating her cheeks (out of anger, out of shame, out of love) or the sweat covering her palms or the ache making its home in her head as she thinks she’s actually gone a little insane. He doesn’t understand because he always was uncomfortable with emotions and he doesn’t feel a single thing in a normal way, but she can, and she can feel the overwhelming wave of loneliness as always because she's longing for everything to be normal and to be with him again.

She thinks he is aptly like Pluto – his favourite planet. The forgotten planet frozen over and waiting and hidden away in the depths of the galaxy and she can’t stop reaching out to hold onto him desperately and pull him into the zone of the sunlight and -

Space metaphors don’t make sense, but she is in love with him to a point where nothing makes sense anyway and it actually kind of hurts. And he is dead.

“Amy, I’ve been pretending to be dead for a year. Why do I feel like I’m more alive than you are?"

Her head hurts.

 

* * *

 

When he walks into the precinct for the first time since his death twelve months ago, Gina screams.

Rosa pulls her gun on him.

Charles bursts into tears.

Holt just nods.

 

* * *

 

Amy Santiago feels breath return to her lungs for the first time in a year.

“You can all see him too?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you, Ames, I’m alive.”

She grabs him quickly, kisses him desperately.

“You’re home?”

“I’m home.”

 

* * *

 

 


End file.
